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Hi, I’m Sonja Berger. I’m chatting to you from Vrede En Lust wine estate
which lies between Paarl and Franschhoek in South Africa. ‘Vrede En Lust’
means peace and passion and what a wonderful setting in which to
celebrate the first day of spring. Imagine the smell of jasmine as we talk
about phrasal verbs. Our three phrasal verbs today are ‘sum up’, ‘cross
out’ and ‘grow apart’. First one up is ‘sum up’. ‘Sum up’ has three
different meanings. The first one is to summarize. The second one is to
represent the most typical qualities of a person or thing and the third
meaning is to form an opinion of someone or something in a very short
time.

Let’s start with meaning one – to summarize. Here is sample sentence

one:

To sum up my message today, if you want a healthy mind, invest in a

healthy body.

Now this is a summary at the end of a speech. Very often when people
make speeches, they have a conclusion in which they sum up, in which
they summarize the main points, and the main point of this speech is
that you have to look after your body because physical wellbeing spills
over into psychological wellbeing. The Greeks new this thousands of
years ago when they said ‘Mensana incorporate Sano’ which means ‘a
sound mind in a sound body’.

Meaning two of ‘sum up’ is to represent the most typical qualities of a

person, a thing or a situation. Sample sentence:

One word sums up his meerkat: Cute.

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Meerkats are suricates that live in Southern Africa and cuteness is a

typical quality. However, that is not the whole story. Meerkats mark their
territory obsessively by weeing everywhere. So, I think it would be
accurate to say that two words sum up meerkats cute and smelly. In my
opinion, those are the two most typical qualities of meerkats.

The third meaning of ‘sum up’ is to form an opinion about a person or a

thing within a very short time. Sample sentence:

First impressions count. People some one another up within one tenth
of a second, according to researchers.

Within a split second of meeting, you for the first time, strangers will
form an opinion about how competent you are, how attractive you are
and how trustworthy you are. These two ladies will have formed an
opinion of me within one tenth of a second as I walked into their tasting
room. ‘Welcome to Vrede En Lust’. Thanks, I feel very welcome.

Alzan, when clients walk through your doors, how do you sum up the
probability of their buying your wine?

Well firstly, for the ladies, you look at the rings and the gentlemen – the
watches and how well they are groomed. First impressions count.

The second phrasal verb we will discuss is ‘cross out’. ‘Cross out’ has two
meanings. The first meaning is to put a line through words, usually
because they are incorrect. And the second meaning is to put a cross
over words or parts of a word or over a picture. Sample sentence one,
illustrating meaning one:

Cross out the words you’ve written incorrectly and write the correct
words neatly above the spelling mistakes.

Drawing a line through a word indicates that you want to replace it with
another word or that you want to correct it. When you have text on a
computer screen with a line going through that text, we talk about ‘strike

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through’. You can also cross something out. You put a line through it
because you want to eliminate it as a choice. Sample sentence:

After I had drawn up my bucket list, I had to cross out a few items
that were too expensive. One of them is a space flight with Virgin
Galactic and 130 thousand pounds. I had to put a line through that
one. But fortunately, I didn’t have to put a line through my cheese
lunch and my lovely glass of Vrede En Lust wine. Bon Appetit.

Another sample sentence:

Children often threaten to cross out a friend’s name on their

birthday invitation list to punish that friend socially. Adults do it too.
Human beings are social creatures. We want to belong to a tribe. We
do not want to have our names crossed off lists. We don’t want lines
through our names because that makes us feel left out.

The second meaning of ‘cross out’ is literally to put a cross over

something, a word or a picture in order to show that you are eliminating
it is an option or to show disapproval. In the previous sample sentence,
we could have used that meaning of ‘cross out’ if the child had put a
cross over the person’s name on the invitation list. But we used the line
through meaning. Now for a sample sentence that illustrates ‘cross out’
as in to put a cross over something:

The CEO of a company wrote the word ‘impossible’ on the

whiteboard, then he crossed out the prefix ‘im’. Why would the CEO
do that? To communicate the message that impossible is not an
option. ‘Possible’ is the only option. In other words, he wanted to tell
his employees that they needed to be positive, they needed to think in
terms of possible, instead of what was impossible.

Our third phrasal verb is ‘grow apart’. To ‘grow apart’ means to become
less close in a relationship than you used to be, to become removed from
someone emotionally. Sample sentence one:

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Couples do not grow apart over night. The emotional unraveling

usually takes some time.

So that sentence means that people don’t instantly lose connection with
each other, it takes time. The emotional distance sets in over time.

Sample sentence two:

After a rare spectacular reunion of Venus and Jupiter on the 27th of

August 2016, the two planets grew apart again.

Now usually, you would say two objects draw apart when they become
removed from each other. In this case, I used a bit of personification, and
I personified the planets Venus and Jupiter as lovers. I was fortunate
enough to see this amazing celestial occurrence on a farm in South Africa
on that night and I’d love to show you the footage of these two planets
so close together and after that, they grew apart again. They became
removed from each other.

The footage for the second sample sentence illustrating ‘grow apart’ was
also shot on the farm where I saw those magnificent planets at sunset.

These free-range calves are weaned at eight months. After the calves
have been weaned, they do not grow apart from their mothers. In
fact, the relationship remains close.

And that brings me to the end of our ‘sum up’, ‘cross out’ and ‘grow
apart’ phrasal verb video. It was a pleasure teaching you. Goodbye.

MAIRO VERGARA ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE